Frances Molesworth, later Marchioness Camden

This portrait was produced to commemorate a marriage that never happened: the seventeen-year-old Frances Molesworth sat for Reynolds in his studio during negotiations leading up to an engagement that she ultimately called off. The outdoor setting of the portrait was intended to reference the idea of her youthful innocence. Molesworth’s outfit evokes Turkish costumes that women also wore for masquerades, or courtly balls. The popularity of this dress reflects a wider obsession with and appropriation of Turkish culture, which to British audiences carried with it an exoticized and taboo sense of the sensual.